Applying Yourself

Rosie is 17 years old and is applying for a ‘Child Nursing’ place at 4 different Universities. Rosie decided to get involved with Student Life because she understands how relieving it can be to know about other people’s experiences in the application process.

At first, the thought of applying to University seemed daunting and stressful. Personal statements, choosing Universities and trying to figure out the new UCAS tariff points system was all a bit confusing. My biggest struggle was whittling down my personal statement to only 4,000 characters. As many as that may sound, when having to include everything that you need within the statement, I found it rather difficult trying to cut certain parts out.

The actual process of applying took a fair amount of time. After adding in all of my personal details, previous employment information, student finance and unique learner codes, I was met with the task of picking 5 universities to apply to. You can apply for just 1, or up to 5; however with having to pay £23 to apply for 2 or more, I decided to go for the full 5. After that, the rest of the process has been pretty straight forward.

UCAS Track is designed to enable you to see whether universities have offered you an interview or a place on your course. Unconditional offers are the best you can get, as this means that the university is offering you a place regardless of what grades you get at the end of sixth form or college. However, these seem fairly rare and are mostly based on your grades from the previous year. Most courses may ask for interviews beforehand, and I have been invited to three so far and within a month of sending off my application. The interviews seem nerve-racking but from hearing other people’s experiences, I don’t think they will be as bad as they seem.

When reading through some itineraries for the interview days, I was met with a lot of revision and preparation. Some of these involved reading up on recent issues regarding my chosen course, revising for Literacy and Numeracy tests and trying to find my GCSE certificates to take with me!

Overall, my experience of applying to UCAS until now has been fairly straightforward, but definitely made easier with the help of teachers and the UCAS help twitter page.